This book explores the origin and growth of the human mind, drawing on archaeology, history, and the fossil record. It suggests that, as an indirect result of bipedal locomotion, early humans ...
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This book explores the origin and growth of the human mind, drawing on archaeology, history, and the fossil record. It suggests that, as an indirect result of bipedal locomotion, early humans developed a feedback relationship among their hands, brains, and tools that evolved into the capacity to externalize thoughts in the form of shaped stone objects. When anatomically modern humans evolved a parallel capacity to externalize thoughts as symbolic language, individual brains within social groups became integrated into a “neocortical Internet,” or super-brain, giving birth to the mind. Noting that archaeological traces of symbolism coincide with evidence of the ability to generate novel technology, the book contends that human creativity, as well as higher order consciousness, is a product of the superbrain. It equates the subsequent growth of the mind with human history, which began in Africa more than 50,000 years ago. As anatomically modern humans spread across the globe, adapting to a variety of climates and habitats, they redesigned themselves technologically and created alternative realities through tools, language, and art. The book connects the rise of civilization to a hierarchical reorganization of the super-brain, triggered by explosive population growth. Subsequent human history reflects to varying degrees the suppression of the mind's creative powers by the rigid hierarchies of nationstates and empires, constraining the further accumulation of knowledge. The modern world emerged after 1200 from the fragments of the Roman Empire, whose collapse had eliminated a central that could thwart innovation. The text concludes with speculation about the possibility of artificial intelligence and the consequences of a mind liberated from its organic antecedents to exist in an independent, nonbiological form.Less

Landscape of the Mind : Human Evolution and the Archaeology of Thought

John Hoffecker

Published in print: 2011-05-31

This book explores the origin and growth of the human mind, drawing on archaeology, history, and the fossil record. It suggests that, as an indirect result of bipedal locomotion, early humans developed a feedback relationship among their hands, brains, and tools that evolved into the capacity to externalize thoughts in the form of shaped stone objects. When anatomically modern humans evolved a parallel capacity to externalize thoughts as symbolic language, individual brains within social groups became integrated into a “neocortical Internet,” or super-brain, giving birth to the mind. Noting that archaeological traces of symbolism coincide with evidence of the ability to generate novel technology, the book contends that human creativity, as well as higher order consciousness, is a product of the superbrain. It equates the subsequent growth of the mind with human history, which began in Africa more than 50,000 years ago. As anatomically modern humans spread across the globe, adapting to a variety of climates and habitats, they redesigned themselves technologically and created alternative realities through tools, language, and art. The book connects the rise of civilization to a hierarchical reorganization of the super-brain, triggered by explosive population growth. Subsequent human history reflects to varying degrees the suppression of the mind's creative powers by the rigid hierarchies of nationstates and empires, constraining the further accumulation of knowledge. The modern world emerged after 1200 from the fragments of the Roman Empire, whose collapse had eliminated a central that could thwart innovation. The text concludes with speculation about the possibility of artificial intelligence and the consequences of a mind liberated from its organic antecedents to exist in an independent, nonbiological form.

This chapter describes a telematic society where bodies attached to artificial brains will shrink. In a telematic society, there will be brains that are linked through a dream-secreting superbrain to ...
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This chapter describes a telematic society where bodies attached to artificial brains will shrink. In a telematic society, there will be brains that are linked through a dream-secreting superbrain to each other and to artificial brains. And yet there will be bodies attached, like anachronisms, to these brains, bodies that demand to be nourished, to reproduce, and to die: spoilsports. This consideration for bodies will make them appear continually smaller, less interesting: they will shrink. Everything physical, everything voluminous is already beginning to atrophy. Devices, in particular, are becoming smaller, cheaper, and tend to shrink into invisibility and be delivered for free. The emerging telematic superbrain will be enormous because it will be a mosaic composed entirely of tiny stones. Size and physicality have become unworthy of interest. What is interesting now is the calculation and computation of minutiae to produce information.Less

To Shrink

Vilém Flusser

Published in print: 2011-03-08

This chapter describes a telematic society where bodies attached to artificial brains will shrink. In a telematic society, there will be brains that are linked through a dream-secreting superbrain to each other and to artificial brains. And yet there will be bodies attached, like anachronisms, to these brains, bodies that demand to be nourished, to reproduce, and to die: spoilsports. This consideration for bodies will make them appear continually smaller, less interesting: they will shrink. Everything physical, everything voluminous is already beginning to atrophy. Devices, in particular, are becoming smaller, cheaper, and tend to shrink into invisibility and be delivered for free. The emerging telematic superbrain will be enormous because it will be a mosaic composed entirely of tiny stones. Size and physicality have become unworthy of interest. What is interesting now is the calculation and computation of minutiae to produce information.

This chapter predicts a scenario in which chamber music can serve as a model of social structure for the coming telematic society. The scenario involves a fabulous universe, that of technical images, ...
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This chapter predicts a scenario in which chamber music can serve as a model of social structure for the coming telematic society. The scenario involves a fabulous universe, that of technical images, and a fabulous society, that of cybernetic dialogue, as well as a fabulous consciousness, that of making music with the power of imagination. In this scenario, people will be in contact with one another through their fingertips on keyboards and so form a dialogical net, a global superbrain that will radiate an ever-expanding, self-renewing, and self-concentrating aura of technical images. Artificial intelligences will be in dialogue with human beings, connected through cables and similar nerve strands. Chamber music will serve as a model for dialogic communication in general, and for telematic communication in particular. This chapter considers chamber music in relation to cybernetics, along with the similarities and differences between chamber music and telematics.Less

Chamber Music

Vilém Flusser

Published in print: 2011-03-08

This chapter predicts a scenario in which chamber music can serve as a model of social structure for the coming telematic society. The scenario involves a fabulous universe, that of technical images, and a fabulous society, that of cybernetic dialogue, as well as a fabulous consciousness, that of making music with the power of imagination. In this scenario, people will be in contact with one another through their fingertips on keyboards and so form a dialogical net, a global superbrain that will radiate an ever-expanding, self-renewing, and self-concentrating aura of technical images. Artificial intelligences will be in dialogue with human beings, connected through cables and similar nerve strands. Chamber music will serve as a model for dialogic communication in general, and for telematic communication in particular. This chapter considers chamber music in relation to cybernetics, along with the similarities and differences between chamber music and telematics.